| Yeh kahan aa gaye hum?' asks Rekha |
 Star Gold stuck 22-carat with its Sabse Favourite Kaun contest on Saturday night when the entire industry showed up for a glam-event organised by a television channel. Everyone from Shah Rukh and Preity to Vivek and Ishaa Koppikar participated. Ishaa even performed to the hit numbers of the year, and the camera caught Shah Rukh humming along with his song. Fairly impressive, except for the fact that Arshad Warsi needs to stop playing Circuit, his Munnabhai character on every occasion. It's like Amitabh Bachchan doing Vijay and Kareena Kapoor purring like Poo all their lives. Give us a break, Arshad. Please. Circuit has now become short-circuit. And whoever wrote Warsi's and co-anchor Malaika Arora's script for Sabse Favourite Kaun needs a crash course in humour. Woman to woman, heart to heart…The second part of Simi Garewal's Rendezvous was a gem from the start. Rekha sparkled like never before, breaking into intermitent giggles at questions about marriage, curling her lips into a mock-sneer while discussing men, narrowing her eyes into an ironic glint…Oh , this was Rekha like never before. Come to think of it, we've never seen Simi so relaxed. As both women let their hair down — in more ways than one — we got to see a sparkling jugalbandi where nothing was taboo, not even the much-speculated relationship with Mr Bachchan. In fact, Rekha took this occasion to let it be known, once and for all, that she was like millions of Indians across the globe who loved Mr Bachchan… and why should there be any awkwardness over that issue? About his influence on her as an actor, Rekha said, "Standing in front of Amitabh Bachchan wasn't easy… when you are fascinated by someone you just pick up things." Rekha cried (for her deceased dog Pisti), she sang Yeh kahan aa gaye hum, no less! laughed and squealed and had a ball. Quite frankly, the second part of the Rekha Rendezvous proved that when it comes to drawing guests out of themselves there's no one quite like Simi Garewal. The politician-guest had no choice but to agree. It's time that political interviews began to treat politicians as human beings rather than angels and ogres. Manoj Raghuvanshi on Sab TV's Khula Manch acted more like a pushy referee than a moderator. But he has now cooled down. Last week when he invited an old phlegmatic member of the BJP to hold forth on tainted parliamentarians, Raghuvanshi not only provided chairs for the participants, he also sat down quietly as the guests went at each other with hammering tongues. Ekta Kapoor's new afternoon serial Kesar is quite a number. Roguish casanova- like heroes are the order of the day, and so it's on Kesar where the heroine's husband is not only a gold digger but also a roving-eyed jack of all traits. While poor… actually quite rich… Kesar waited for her pati-devil to return home, the wolf in sleek clothing was busy holding another woman so tight I thought she'd die of suffocation. While Kesar's husband held the Other Woman in an illicit clinch, the camera circled them curiously. Unlike the other sharp-and-shrill heroines in Ekta Kapoor's serial, Kesar is frail and….well, rather dumb. But her ma-in-law... ooh la la! Kitu Gidwani returns to television rather quietly and mysteriously wearing snazzy contact lenses. What an actress and what an inglorious return. Ditto Neena Gupta. Who would believe that once, not too long ago, she was the queen of all she surveyed. And now Ms Gupta is back playing mother to Rohit Roy in Star's Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand. Pardon my flinch… But she doesn't look like his matajee from any angle. And neither does Kitu Gidwani look like Kesar's sasuma. There's an acute dearth of strong 45-plus actresses on the soaps. But this lacuna I'm afraid, can't be filled with actresses who are barely into the mid-life, more so now when Star's extremely popular new channel Star Utsav has begun to telecast all the beloved old serials including Neena Gupta's Saans, where she looks like a million bucks and acts even better. Now in Des Mein… I saw her doing a, ha ha, comedy scene with the Roy-boy. I fell off laughing. But for all the wrong reasons. What on earth is happening on Des Mein Nikla Hoga Chand? Last week Yash (Rohit) left on his honeymoon to Dubai with his new wife. Each time she wasn't looking he'd whisper into his cellphone and wear a sinister look. |
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